We were flipping through the most recent issue of Investment News and came across some interesting statistics. The Prime Numbers page at the end of the paper lists the number of unique website visitors in June and the monthly change for 10 financial services firms - Fidelity, Vanguard, Scottrade, E*TRADE Financial, TD Ameritrade, Charles Schwab, ShareBuilder, Merrill Lynch, T Rowe Price and Smith Barney - all covered by Corporate Insight. (Compete Data Hub is listed as the study’s source.)

According to the stats, only discount firms - ShareBuilder, Scottrade and E*TRADE Financial - saw a positive month-over-month change in unique site visitors in June. Charles Schwab remained the same, and the others declined in visits. In fact, ShareBuilder saw a 15% rise in visitors (1,493,281 total) - the highest percentage rise - followed by Scottrade with an 8% rise (2,633,936 total). Interestingly, Fidelity had the largest total number of visitors in June (5,292,868), but that represents a 4% decrease.

These are interesting findings. Based on the numbers, it appears that investor interest may be turning in the direction of the discount brokers. Scottrade offers the lowest commissions of all these firms, followed by ShareBuilder and TD Ameritrade. This should not be too shocking, though, given the current state of the economy and the markets. Just like all consumers, investors are looking for bargains. Obviously, we cannot reasonably conclude that this is really a trend based on only one month’s numbers; however, it will certainly be interesting to see how this continues in future months. Hopefully, Investment News will continue publishing these statistics regularly.

A few weeks ago, Citibank announced that it was making changes to its credit card private site and would be displaying different screen designs for an unspecified number of days. For weeks following the announcement, which was reported in the July 14, 2008 CCM Update, we saw old and new pages in a seemingly random order when visiting the site. Compounding this confusion, we didn’t always see the same page when several of us viewed the site at the same time.

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It’s no secret that the annuity industry has faced its fair share of scandals this decade. Tales of crooked advisors talking old folks out of their retirement savings are in the back of many investors’ minds when they hear the word “annuity.” The fact that annuities are seen as complicated and loaded with hidden fees does little to bolster product sales either.

The negative publicity against the annuity industry peaked in April when Dateline NBC caught several advisors selling unsuitable indexed annuities to older investors. The program also exposed seedy training seminars that serve to proliferate unethical selling practices and promote a “sell first” mentality that makes clients’ needs a secondary consideration.

To the industry’s credit, many firms have taken steps over the past year to address the growing concern surrounding suitability. Continue Reading »

While doing research for an upcoming e-Monitor report on brokerage-provided news, we came across an article highlighting FiSpace - which bills itself as a social networking site for investors that is “ten years in the making,” according to its About Us page. Since Web 2.0 and social networking are hot topics these days, and since online investing tools are our bag, we decided to check the site out. Continue Reading »